Jonathan Goldman The ParroticVoice of the Frivolous: Fiction by Ronald Firbank, I. Compton-Burnett, and Max Beerbohm Also, she told him that she knew nothing about music really, but she knew what she liked. As she passed with him up the aisle, she said this again. People who say it are never tired of saying it. Beerbohm, The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson [1911] 150 1keep a diary, because 1think 1have that kind of personality. 1must put it in my will that it is to be destroyed at my death. For fear somebody should read it, and publish it, and pretend they had written it. Unless 1 leave it to Nicholas, so that he can have written a book after all ... But there is so much falseness about books. Compton-Burnett, Pastors and Masters [1924] 104-105 'How incomparable their livery is!' Lady Parvula commented. 'It has a seminary touch about it,' Mrs. Hurstpeirpont conceded, 'though at headquarters it's regarded (I fear!) as inclining toward mod- ernism, somewhat.' 'Pray, what's that?' 'Modernism? Ask any bishop.' Lady Parvularippled. 'I once' she said, (resolutely refusing a stirring salmis of cocks'- combs saignant with Bechamel sauce), 'I once peeped under a bishop's apron!' 'Oh... ?' Jonathan Goldman is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at Brown University, where he studies twentieth-century American, British, and French literature and culture. He published a review in the Spring 1999 issue of the James Joyce Quarterly, and is currently collaborating on an English transla- tion of Victor Marguet1tte's 1922 novel, La Garfonne. NARRATIVE, Vo1.7, No.3 (October 1999) Copyright 1999 by The Ohio State University